American Airlines has taken me around the world.

Literally.  Like I live in Australia and flew American on my moving flight.

Furthermore, I’ve collaborated with the team at American on videos like my MD-80 retirement tribute and my million mile video.  I took some of the first publicly-released images of American’s new SkyView campus.  I even did an overnight lock-in with American to see how they prepare jets overnight to ensure they get out on time the next morning.

It’s safe to say that, as a loyal American flyer, I’m a fan of American.  I want it to succeed.

It’s not succeeding.  It’s slowly dying.  Former CEO Doug Parker’s “American will never lose money again” prediction has proven false under his protogé and current CEO Bob Isom.  American’s stock price is languishing and their balance sheet is suffering under hefty debt, much of it maturing in the next three years (this is called a “maturity wall”, listen for this when the financial news is talking about American, it’s real).

As American tries to survive, the customer experience is devolving.  American’s pursuit of every type of customer, from high-end premium travellers to low-cost price chasers, has left its brand diluted almost beyond recognition.  Constant changes to the AAdvantage program and over-reliance on co-branded credit cards have left the in-flight experience a confusing, inconsistent mess.

So…if it’s dying, who will save it?

Me.  Let me try.

How I would save American Airlines

Ok, first off, some caveats, particularly for those of you who know what I do for a living:

• I have no inside access to the financial workings of American Airlines and will be focusing on non-financial areas
• American has some very smart people working for the airline, this is not intended to be disrespectful towards them, I know that everyone is doing the best they can.  Some of what I’m proposing may already be in the works, I have no way of knowing
• At the time of publishing, I do not hold any financial stake in American Airlines or have any derivate instruments or options based on American Airlines (nor any other airline, for that matter)
• My perspective should read as that of a somewhat-informed supporter of the airline who wants to see it shine once again, nothing more and nothing less

Step 1: Who is American Airlines?

American has no identity.  Without looking, I could not even tell you what their current motto is.  If I had to guess, maybe it’s “we know why you fly”?  Oh wait, maybe it’s caring for people on life’s journey.  Regardless, I couldn’t see it anywhere on American’s website or app, although I did notice that the font of the credit card ad that shouted at me on the website was larger than American’s own logo.

(we’ll get to credit cards in a while, don’t worry)

American has a certain advantage to their business, just like United and Delta: the Hub-and-Spoke model.  American’s hubs are mostly distinct from the other airlines’ hubs.  This means that there is a certain amount of built-in business that American can depend on.  If someone is located in the DFW metroplex, odds are they’ll fly American for premium travel.  Same for Charlotte, Philly, and Phoenix.

American has valuable monopolies in these regions.  Those monopolies have worn away at the American brand, though.  American doesn’t need to reach those customers and tell them who they are.  They take these hubbed customers for granted, because even if they’re upset, they’re probably still going to take the nonstop flight on American instead of connecting on another airline.  American doesn’t need to be anything for these customers, and they’re not.  They are nothing.  Passengers walk onto gray planes decorated with gray-on-gray interior furnishings, have a perfectly forgettable flight, if they’re lucky, and get to their destination.

American Airlines needs to spell out who they are.  Right now, they can’t.  “Caring for people on life’s journey” sounds like a tag-line for an elderly facility.

Why should I fly American?  What can I expect as a customer?  Will my experience on my next flight be the same as my last one?  What is the unifying narrative thread that runs through American Airlines as it is only two years away from its 100th anniversary?

How about a motto like: “From us, for you.”  Embrace the humanity of the people of your airline and make them the stars of the show!  It’s a simple, believable motto that accomplishes two goals: 1) reminds the people of American what their purpose is (the customer) and 2) reminds the customer that it’s the human beings at American who make the jets fly.  Plus, it sounds like a gift.  It’s easy to remember, rolls off the tongue in many languages, and even has some alliteration to it, and everybody loves alliteration.

So, step 1.  Identify your purpose.  You are about to enter your 100th year as an airline.  Talking about financials doesn’t motivate 103,000 team members at American.  Common purpose, common goals, and shared experiences do.

“From us, for you”.  That’s where it starts.

Step 2: Re-organize staff to create a consistent customer experience

I fly a bunch of different airlines these days, as most of my travel is either around Australia or around Asia.  As a oneworld Emerald member (thanks to Executive Platinum status with American, which I still maintain).  I’ve found the experience as a oneworld Emerald very confusing from airline to airline, especially Qatar, who might as well not be in oneworld with how they treat oneworld status holders.

Back home, the customer experience with American is sadly not any different.  Airline experiences are different from desk to desk, especially when dealing with contracted employees.  Lounges are crowded, upgrade rules are always changing, can you really blame customers for not knowing what to expect?

Southwest Airlines established it’s legacy by creating the most consistent customer experience in the skies.  If you liked how they did it, you would like it every time.  If you hated how they did it, you can be certain you would hate it every time.  Sadly, Southwest has sheepishly fallen at the feet of an activist investor and is now throwing all of that away, but the point remains.

How do you create a consistent customer experience?  Re-align your executives horizontally and give them ownership and accountability for each and every step of the customer experience.

• VP of Flight Search
  • Managing Directors of Revenue Flight Search and Award Flight Search
  • Create and release AI-based flight searching in collaboration with your partners at rental car agencies and hotels.  As a customer, I should be able to give the AI an idea of where I’m trying to go, for how long, and in which area I’d like to stay at my destination, and it spits out an itinerary for me and makes it easy to book.  If I can create something very similar to this in ChatGPT (Andy’s Travel Bot!), you should be able to make it much better.  That is the way of encouraging use of American’s booking channels, not pitting your customers against their travel agents
  • Make sure that your flight searches work, both for revenue flights and award flights
• VP of Check-In
  • Managing Directors of Online Check-In and Airport Check-In)
  • Standardise the experience customers will have when checking in for an American and/or partner flight
  • Work with contractors and outstation resources to ensure that this experience is the same no matter where a customer checks in for an American flight
• VP of Airport Security
  • Standardise American’s approach to dealing with the TSA, CBP, and security agencies in other jurisdictions
  • Evaluate where American’s desks are compared to security gates and work with airlines for most advantageous placement for your customers
• VP of Boarding
  • Does American need 9 boarding groups with two unpublished ones that go before it?  How about in international destinations where American’s Way of boarding is not enforced and they just board all premium passengers at once, causing a maelstrom of carry-on baggage and rioting
  • Fix the boarding process.  This VP especially should have the full authority to experiment and try new things.  Should American board back to front?  Should American cut down boarding groups to 5?  Should American actually innovate and try crazy things like allowing anyone who is not placing a bag in the overhead bin to board first?  I don’t know the answer, but this VP should find it
• VP of In-Flight Service
  • Should have Managing Directors for Pre-Flight, In-Flight Entertainment, and Post-Flight
  • Standardise how in-flight service will look from a customer’s perspective every time (if allowed by airport conditions and flight timings)
    • Work with the unions to make this happen in such a way that everyone feels happy about it, especially the customer
• VP of Food and Beverage
  • As you probably guessed, Managing Director slots for Food and for Beverage
  • Come up with a menu that is easy to prepare and change it often.  Involve your customers in the food selection with in-flight polling and data gathering.  Empower flight attendants to mark down what a customer was having when they send back a plate of food with only one bite taken out of it
• VP of Checked Baggage
  • MD slots for Bag Drop and for Baggage Carousel
  • Develop consistent process for how customers interact with both Bag Drop and the Baggage Carousel
  • Give customers 500 AAdvantage points for checking a bag to shorten boarding times, it costs you nothing and eases overhead bin usage

Do that and you’re on the right start.  But here’s the thing: on day one of their new roles, have them all meet in the same conference room.  Have Bob Isom walk in and say something cool like “I hope you’re ready, because this is the last time we should all be in the same room together” and kick them over to DFW to board flights and get to work.  These are all customer-facing roles that should be in airports and at check-in desks to enforce standards and be examples of consistent customer experiences.

Embrace that this isn’t a typical airline corporate structure.  Embrace your role as an underdog.  Those VPs should be in commercials talking about how they’re doing things differently to ensure every American customer has a consistent experience (which really drives home the From Us part of the motto).  Tell customers what to expect, get it right, and they will talk about you to others.  None of this stupid Net Promotor Score nonsense, actual human conversations like “man I used to hate flying them but they’ve really been stepping it up lately, not even doing more, just doing what they normally do but better.”

Step 3: Get rid of as many defined-benefit programs as you can

American has an upgrade problem.

What’s the problem?  American doesn’t have enough space left to upgrade as many people as they used to.

Programs like this are called defined-benefit programs because, well, the benefit is defined, but the contribution is not.

American offers complimentary domestic upgrades to its status holders on a space-available basis based on your status level and your rolling 12-month loyalty point balance (which they never disclose to you…which is dumb).  I know plenty of people who research flight loads well enough to play this game and they end up in First Class nearly every time.  The thing is, though, these people can afford to pay for First Class.  Or they might be on a quick flight from Chicago to St. Louis and not even want to mess with an upgrade.  This defined-benefit program has morphed into customer expectation.  This has gotten especially contentious for some customers after American’s pilots negotiated upgrades when they are dead-heading to another airport.  American can not provide a consistent upgrade experience with the way the program exists today.

This part of saving American will not be fun for customers: get rid of complimentary domestic upgrades for everyone but Concierge Key status holders.  Give out 4 domestic upgrade certificates (good for one person for one segment) at each loyalty point reward level for Executive Platinum holders, and 2 domestic upgrade certs for Platinum Pro holders.

Why take something away from customers when American needs their frequent flyers the most?  Simple reason: American needs people to pay for First Class.  American must improve a particular airline industry metric called PASM, or Profit per Available Seat Mile.  It’s time to stop giving out free upgrades when a customer may have not even cared.  Make your customers tell you when they want to be upgraded so it means something when it happens.

Change it from an expectation to an elected value-add.  This means American may fly with empty seats in First Class.  GOOD.  That’s the point of First Class, not everyone gets to fly there. More people will pay for the privilege, either in cash or with their frequent flyer benefits, but it should never come automatically.  Customers need to put their hand up (or their wallet).  Premium cabins are basically the only cabins that make money for the airlines, American must figure out a way to make what they have feel more premium.  Upgrade lists with 75 people on them are not the way.

This is an example of just one defined-benefit program.  American Airlines has a LOT of these programs.  Reducing defined-benefit programs allows American’s customers the chance to use their benefits at the point where it will mean the most to them.  It’s a painful move but it has to be done.

Step 4: Make Flying Interesting Again

Southwest Airlines has a particular brand of interesting which feels far too casual for many premium flyers.  I’m not saying that American should become Southwest.  American just needs to create a customer experience that is interesting enough to mention to others.  This customer experience starts with consistency, sure, but it’s not rocket surgery.  American needs to take advantage of their own intellectual property, their brand, and their partnerships to make the in-flight experience interesting!

American is about to celebrate their 100-year anniversary.  What’s the plan for that?  Is there a short film on the way talking about the history and legacy of American Airlines?  It needs to be shooting now.  What about the history of Admiral’s Clubs?  American Airlines created the airline lounge concept back in the late 1930’s at LGA with the first Flagship Lounge.  Why isn’t there content on the in-flight entertainment options telling that story?  American Airlines has 100,000+ team members and 100 years of stories.  Unleash your own creatives to tell those stories to your customers on your flights.

Why does American only partner with big brands and content houses for their in-flight content?  Why not popular YouTube content creators like Dude Perfect to syndicate their YouTube videos onto American’s flights?  These creators have rabid followings, use them!

40% of American citizens have never left the country.  Why not bring the world to them when they’re flying American Airlines?  American has JV partners in Oceania, Europe, and Asia, and oneworld partners across the globe.  Why not have a rotating featured entree on the first class menu from one of American’s oneworld partners?  It doesn’t need to be the best dish in the world, it just needs to be interesting enough to talk about after the flight.  Japan Airlines has pre-packaged steam masks for after their meal service is completed in premium cabins.  How hard can it be to get some of those same things to offer premium customers on American flights “from our oneworld partners Japan Airlines”?  Celebrate what makes American and oneworld unique.

American has been a long-time partner of the film industry for decades.  From the Bonnie Award to partnerships with the likes of BAFTA, American is a household name in the entertainment industry.  Pull out all the stops with the connections that only American would have and create the first-ever In-Flight Film Festival during movie award season.  Short films that can only be watched on American flights with your customers casting votes on their favorites.

These are random ideas off the top of my head.  Some of them are pretty genius, he said humbly, others are probably marginal at best.  But you know what it does?  It gets American customers involved in the in-flight experience in a unique way that no other airline can.  Most importantly, it pulls American customers out of their own content on their phones and pulls them into American’s content.

American made an enormous bet that removing seatback screens across their narrowbody fleet would be worth it.  While I still think that is a severely dumb move and should be reconsidered as quickly as possible, it means that American’s content needs to be more unique than the other airlines and right now it’s not.

Create an experience worth talking about.

Step 5: Stop doing what your customers hate (change the credit card pitch)

Customers, at scale, are legendarily terrible judges about what will make them happy.  However, those same customers are excellent judges of what they hate.

If I can speak for all customers, we all hate the credit card pitch.  American needs to change it.

Co-branded credit cards are the straw that stirs the drink of major airlines right now and without them airlines would not be making very much money, maybe with Delta as the exception.  American needs those credit card relationships, but at a certain point even those credit card signups will have a ceiling, and you just have to think we’re probably closer to that ceiling than further away from it, especially considering the average consumer credit card debt numbers setting new records.

The current credit card pitch, as narrated by flight attendants via in-flight announcement function, is disruptive at best, interrupting a customer’s in-flight experience to be marketed to when many customers (especially the premium customers American so covets) already have the card(s).  At a more philosophical level, too many of American’s customers are tired of seeing disinterested flight attendants until it’s credit card offer time when they seem to suddenly spring to life.  American’s customers are told by the captain’s pre-flight announcement that flight attendants are there primarily for our safety, if that’s the case why is the longest announcement we hear from a flight attendant during a flight not related to safety?  American is actually training its customers to ignore in-flight announcements by hijacking them for a marketing pitch.

It’s tacky and beneath a premium airline.

I realize American needs that credit card pitch, though.  It’s a way for flight attendants to make more money without American having to pay it (flight attendants are paid by the credit card issuer for each approved credit card application) and those credit card partnerships have been the difference between making money and losing money in certain financial reporting periods for American.  So how do you keep the pitch without disrupting the passenger experience?

Yep, you guessed it: move it to the app, preferably alongside complimentary Starlink internet for AAdvantage members.

American’s app is smart enough to know when you are on a flight.  The app is not primarily there for your safety, but you know customers will probably be using it at some point during the flight.  Make the app smart enough to know who has the credit cards (because it’s tied to their AAdvantage account) and who does not and deliver appropriate advertising messages based on their credit card status at the 40 minutes until landing mark, just after the captain’s message about initial descent towards the destination.  Make these pieces smart and relevant and people will not mind the disruption.  Take whatever money is eventually earned from credit card signups via this method and split it across the flight attendants working on that flight.

Why am I involving Starlink?  Well, every other airline is announcing it, so American needs to get on that train.  American charges extreme amounts for their wifi right now, and even so I would argue that a new signup for the AAdvantage program is worth more than that revenue.  AAdvantage members are more likely to get credit cards and if you entice people with free fast internet, they’ll sign up in a heartbeat.  Then they’re in your app funnel!

and, finally, Step 6: Embrace being the underdog

America loves a great comeback story.  American Airlines desperately needs one.  Enough talk about schedules being the product, American needs to get out there and give the flying public a clear message: we’ve always been here, we’re still here, and we’ve never worked harder to create a great experience for you.  From us, for you.

Embrace the underdog mindset.  View yourself as the third-place airline of the Big Three (even if you’re leading in certain areas) and make getting back to number one your goal.  Share that goal with your team members so it can be their goal too.  Tell your customers and be honest with them about your struggles and then tell them you’re coming back and will not stop until you’re number one again.

Be human, give customers a story to identify with and believe in and they will.  Customers will pay more for something they believe in.

Ok how did I do?

This post was a labor of love, and if nothing else I hope it gives you some insight into how I look at an airline I know very deeply.  I see such a big future for American Airlines and their customers but only if American comes down to the level of those customers and engages them more closely than ever before.

The financials are going to be what they’re going to be, and thankfully American is getting some rate relief from the Fed and economists are predicting more rate cuts in the months ahead.  American has been diligent about paying off a lot of their debt early to avoid the maturity wall.  Structurally, American is in a decent spot, they just don’t have enough jets due to delays from Boeing and Airbus.

There’s good and there’s bad, which just averages out to…marginal.  American needs to be more than marginal for its own sake, and, honestly, America needs American to be more than marginal.  It’s time to write the fabled American comeback story and I hope American tells that story well.

 

 

Would you want to fly on an airline that interrogates itself to find unique ways to make the experience more interesting for their customers?  What’s missing from my list of things, besides things like “bring back the old award chart”?  Tell me in the comments below!